Mother 'updated Twitter while son was dying'

A mother who posted updates on Twitter as rescue workers tried to save her dying son has sparked debate over the use of the microblogging website.

As paramedics attempted to revive her son Bryson after he was found floating face down in a swimming pool, Shellie Ross sent out a message on Twitter , asking her followers: "Please pray like never before, my 2 yr old fell in the pool."

Five hours later, when her son was pronounced dead, she again took to the Twitter site to update her 5,000 followers.

"Remembering my million dollar baby," she wrote.

Moments later, she posted a photo of her son on the site.

Her use of Twitter as her son lay dying provoked outrage among the blogging community in the US.

Police in Florida said they were aware of the "tweets" and would be looking into them as part of their investigation into the drowning.

Mrs Ross's public announcement of her son's death prompted anger from fellow bloggers and Twitter users.

Many were shocked that she chose to use the social networking site to reveal something so deeply personal.

"The first thing I thought when I saw the tweet was that it was very sad," said Madison McGraw.

"But then I thought, 'Who would tweet that her son just drowned?' I couldn't believe it."

Mrs Ross, who used the tweet name of "Military-Mom", had sent out a message at 5.22pm on Monday which read:"Fog is rolling in thick scared the birds back in the coop." She and her 11-year-old son had been cleaning out a chicken coup while Bryson played in the garden.

A minute later police in Mirrett Island, Florida, said they received an emergency call from Mrs Ross's 11-year-old son saying that his brother was floating unconscious in their pool.

Records show that the Brevard County Fire-Rescue paramedics arrived at Mrs Ross's home at 5:38 pm

And 34 minutes later, at 6:12 pm, she asked for people's prayers.

Police spokesman Lt Bruce Barnett said Mrs Ross had asked her older son to turn off a hose inside the pool enclosure but the gate behind him did not close properly.

"When Ross finished cleaning she went inside and was looking for the 2-year-old, who she thought was with her 11-year-old, and wasn't able to find him and started to panic," he said. "That's when she found him floating."

Lt Barnett said Mrs Ross said her son was in the water for "maybe five minutes" and performed CPR on her son before paramedics arrived.

Mrs Ross defended her use of Twitter to announce her son's death.

"Nobody has a right to question" why she tweeted, she said.

"I didn't tweet-by-tweet the accident."

The messages and photos later appeared to have been removed from the website.

Mrs Ross, who is in her 30s, was a regular blogger on the site Momdot.com where she worked as an administrator.

Trisha Haas, who founded the site, said Mrs Ross wanted her online friends to know what was going on. She said there was nothing wrong in her tweeting about her son.

"She Twitters a lot and was very good close friends with people in the blogging community," said Mrs Haas.

Mrs Ross and her husband Steven, who is in the US Air Force, have said they want to be left alone to mourn their son.